I was
"chaffing."

"Chaffing indeed!" says I, with a particularly arch eye-twinkle at
Miss Fanny. "I wouldn't make fun of you, Captain Hicks! If you doubt my
historical accuracy, look at the 'Biographie Universelle.' I say--look
at the 'Biographie Universelle.'"

He said, "O--ah--the 'Biogwaphie Universelle' may be all vewy well, and
that; but I never can make out whether you are joking or not, somehow;
and I always fancy you are going to CAWICKACHAW me. Ha, ha!" And he
laughed, the good-natured dragoon laughed, and fancied he had made a
joke.

I entreated him not to be so severe upon me; and again he said, "Haw
haw!" and told me, "I mustn't expect to have it all MY OWN WAY, and if
I gave a hit, I must expect a Punch in return. Haw haw!" Oh, you honest
young Hicks!

Everybody, indeed, was in high spirits. The fog cleared off, the sun
shone, the ladies chatted and laughed, even Mrs. Milliken was in good
humor ("My wife is all intellect," Milliken says, looking at her with
admiration), and talked with us freely and gayly. She was kind enough
to say that it was a great pleasure to meet with a literary and
well-informed person--that one often lived with people that did not
comprehend one. She asked if my companion, that tall gentleman--Mr.
Serjeant Lankin, was he?--was literary. And when I said that Lankin knew
more Greek, and more Latin, and more law, and more history, and more
everything, than all the passengers put together, she vouchsafed to
look at him with interest, and enter into a conversation with my modest
friend the Serjeant. Then it was that her adoring husband said "his
Lavinia was all intellect;"--Lady Kicklebury saying that SHE was not a
literary woman: that in HER day few acquirements were requisite for the
British female; but that she knew THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, and her DUTY AS
A MOTHER, and that "Lavinia and Fanny had had the best masters and
the best education which money and constant maternal solicitude could
impart." If our matrons are virtuous, as they are, and it is Britain's
boast, permit me to say that they certainly know it.

The conversation growing powerfully intellectual under Mrs. Milliken,
poor Hicks naturally became uneasy, and put an end to literature by
admiring the ladies' head-dresses. "Cab-heads, hoods, what do you call
'em?" he asked of Miss Kicklebury. Indeed, she and her sister wore a
couple of those blue silk over-bonnets, which have lately become the
fashion, and which I neve